PERSPECTIVE ON IRAN : The People Will Be Heard : The West is just beginning to glimpse the unrest bred by 13 years of economic and religious tyranny.

In recent months, a number of important Western journalists have been allowed to visit Iran, and many of their reports have made front-page news in some of the major Western dailies. These reports have dealt mainly with the situation generally in Iran and the difficulties facing the “pragmatic” Hashemi Rafsanjani as he struggles to lift Iran out of the acute and unparalleled economic depression in which the nation finds itself today--a state of affairs for which he and his comrades must bear full responsibility. Against this background, the general image of Iran is that of a country led by a “moderate” leader who is bent on reversing the economic decline of recent years, while cautiously moving the country away from the tenets of Islamic fundamentalism that has been the scourge of the Iranian people and the international community for the past 13 years.

Throughout these reports there has been a somewhat euphoric tendency to dismiss the plight of ordinary people in Iran, who have been subjected to 13 years of war, repression, economic deprivation and denial of basic human rights. No journalist or so-called expert has publicly asked the simple question, “What has the Islamic regime done for the people of Iran in order to justify their confidence and support?” And there is no evidence that anyone has attempted to offer an answer to this crucial question.

In Western countries, it is taken for granted that governments must “do something” for the ordinary citizen in order to gain confidence. The visiting journalists and so-called experts apply this rationality only selectively to the people of Iran, who are depicted as having been sufficiently mature and capable to know when they were being wronged before the “revolution” of 1979, but never subsequently.

The fact that the Islamic regime has been responsible for the deaths of 1 million people and the disabling of another 1.5 million has made little or no impression on the average citizen of the world, due mainly to inadequate coverage by the media. Moreover, the general perception promoted by bureaucrats and journalists alike has always minimized the impact of a declining economy, where nearly 6 million people are homeless and 40% are unemployed. The fact that rampant inflation, currently more than 40%, has not been checked, and that the Iranian currency has continued to decline to levels more than 2,000% below its value in 1979, while population growth figures continue to accelerate, seems to continually fail the test when it comes to offering a disapproving appraisal of public support for the Iranian regime.

It would seem that the same Iranian people who were given credit for resisting the various excesses of the previous regime have somehow resigned themselves to the fate determined for them by a regime with a record of brutality and repression that is unprecedented in Iran’s 2,500-year history. While any of the foregoing political or economic factors would be considered enough to merit a change of government in any civilized country, it has consistently been found convenient to disregard the aspirations of a people who continue to suffer, but also to hope, and who, seemingly, are considered incapable of making themselves heard.

To everyone’s surprise, just as it happened in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, recent events in Iran have clearly demonstrated that the qualities of complacency and indifference widely attributed to the people of Iran were badly misplaced.

Just as all wishful thinkers--whether in the media or in the corridors of power--were becoming accustomed to the false sense of security that they themselves had created vis-a-vis the future of Iran, their peace of mind was rudely disrupted by the ordinary, average citizen in a number of cities. By their actions, taken against all odds, people in Mashhad, Isfahan, Shiraz and Bukan, and in a number of towns in the Khuzistan province, reminded the outside world that all was far from well inside Iran. The outside world was reminded that Eastern Europe does not have a monopoly on the kind of courage, or fighting spirit, that eventually drives defenseless people with a long history of brutalization into spontaneously demonstrating their hatred of a system that has destroyed their prosperity and shattered their pride.

The uprisings of the past several weeks in Iran are a clear reminder that neither fundamentalism nor any other form of religious fanaticism is any substitute for democratic government, and that if given the opportunity, the people of Iran would eagerly choose that option.